May 2, 2011
Well, I had a totally different post ready for today. I went out to dinner with my parents last night and we had a great meal and a great time. I came home and opened a beer and then heard that our military killed that fucker Osama Bin Laden. I don’t like to get political here and I won’t. I just remember watching footage of that asshole watching the twin towers go down and he was so happy. I just hope that son of an ass-raping prick died slowly and painfully.
I don’t think this will change things a lot in the long run, but I do feel some amount of closure. People were really happy here last night. Is it wrong to celebrate someone’s death, no matter how vile they were? Ummm...nahhh. One less asshole in this world and that’s a good thing. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I’ve decided that instead of the regular MAD post, I’d put up my memories of September, 11th, 2001. To the memories of all those that died on that day and to all of us that still get anxiety attacks thinking about it. I hope Osama was still alive when he shit his robe. I got dibs on his kidney machine!
The Weird Day When the Sky Went Brown
I’ve seen the sky in many colors, various shades of blue, gray, black, purple, but up to that day, I had never seen the sky the color of brown. It kind of made me feel sick in a weird, Twilight Zone William-Shatner-see-a-monster-on-the-airplane’s wing-kind of way. And it was a grotesque brown color; it looked like Satan had vomited a stomach full of Yoo-Hoo all over the Manhattan skyline. After a couple of minutes of staring at this stomach-turning mess of a sky, I turned around and looked uptown and the sky was blue. Then I turned back around, looked downtown and the sky was still brown. It was really weird. Like some kind of a whacked-out nursery rhyme: Downtown brown / uptown blue / knick knack paddywhack / give the dog some glue.
The day started weird and just got weirder and more sickening as the minutes turned into hours and the brown day careened into a purple-black night. The day had started with a strange series of clicks emanating from my phone.
I work nights so I have a schedule that’s opposite of most people—I keep Elvis hours, I sleep in the day and wake up in the afternoon—so I always keep the ringer on my phone off and turn the volume on my phone answering machine all the way down. So while I never hear the phone ring or the messages people leave, you can hear a click when someone calls. On this day, just as I was falling off to dreamland, I heard my first click.
“Weird,” I thought, “I wonder who’s calling me at this hour?” Then I started to drift off to slumberland once again.
Then another click.
Then another.
And another. Another one. Anotheranotheranotheranotheranotheranother. Click. Click. Clickclickclickclickclick. Click. Clickityclickclickclick. Clickclickclickclickclick. Clickclick. Clickclickclickityclickclickclickclick. Clickclickclick. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
This went on for a while. I’d just about be asleep and then another series of clicks would rattle off like a hyperactive machine gun spraying wake up dust all over my kingdom of sleep. Finally, even though I was dreary-eyed tired, I got up, scaled down the ladder attached to my loft bed, and stumbled over to the phone answering machine. The little red light on the grey and silver rectangular machine was blinking in a hyperactive fashion. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon.
“Who the fuck is calling me,” I said to myself as I turned the volume up on the answering machine and hit Play.
Now this is where the weirdness really kicks in to a nerve-rattling gear. I’ve never had so many messages on my phone machine in my life and I didn’t understand a single one of them.
BEEEEP—“Hey, Marty, this is Tom, just calling to make sure you’re okay, call me when you get a chance.”—BEEEEP.
Tom is my older brother, who lives in New Jersey.
“Why in the fuck is he calling to see if I’m okay at this hour?” I wondered. Then:
BEEEEP—“Dude, it’s Alex, I rode my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge. I saw the people jumping out of the buildings, call me when you can. I’m drinking already.”—BEEEEP
“Huh?” Alex is one of my best friends, who used to live in Brooklyn.
“People jumping out of buildings?” I thought to myself. I was starting to feel like you do when you’ve smoked too much pot and start jumping out of your skin as paranoia strikes deep. And with every message, I was feeling more and more creeped out.
There were messages from everybody in my family, almost everybody I know in New York, and messages from old friends from my hometown of Peoria, Illinois. And they all were pretty much the same: “Are you okay?...call when you get a chance...are you all right?...we want to make sure you’re okay....”
Nobody said what had happened. Everybody sounded weird and more than one person was crying. I was starting to imagine apocalypse. Now.
Finally, after I listened to all of them, I looked at my window and wondered what in the fucking hell was lurking out there. I keep black construction paper taped over the two small windows in my apartment to keep the sunlight out (Elvis hours and all) and for a couple of sickening minutes I just stared at my black windows and trying to imagine the horror that was happening on the other side. Finally I walked over to the door that leads to the roof overhang and slowly and carefully opened it up and poked my head out like a turtle coming out of his shell. When I looked outside, I was shocked.
Everything looked normal.
I looked outside and nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Sure, I heard some sirens, but that’s standard operating procedure for New York City. The sun was shining brightly, the sky was bright blue and was dotted with white fluffy clouds. A bird flew overhead and a warm breeze hit my face. Maybe Hell wasn’t hiccupping after all.
Then I shut the door and turned on the TV.
I can’t remember which station it was, but I remember looking at the screen, seeing planes flying into buildings and people with horrific zombielike faces running away in big crowds from giant dust clouds. My jaw dropped and I grabbed my stomach. It kind of looked like New York and I instinctively and quickly turned the channel, somehow hoping that would make this go away.
It didn’t.
After I watched the TV and figured out what happened I went outsid to the street, looked downtown and saw the brown sky. I should’ve walked away from it, but I wasn’t thinking clearly and started to walk towards it.
Throngs of people were walking like zombies towards the brown sky. Before I knew it, I had joined this lemminglike parade. Regular traffic was shut off after 14th Street, so it got increasingly surreal the closer I got. No cars except cop cars, helicopters buzzing overhead, a brown sky, people walking willy-nilly in every direction, everybody with a dazed how-could-this-happen look plastered on their puss. Some people were openly weeping. Army men with guns dotted every street. Cops were all over the place. TV cameras and the talking heads from all of the news channels were blithering and blathering on every other corner. It was chaos. I got pretty close and then decided I really didn’t want to be down there anymore. What I wanted was a beer, so I turned around and started walking towards the blue side of the city. It probably wasn’t normal anymore either, but it had to beat the brown side of town.
I wandered to many bars that afternoon and evening. The atmosphere in the bars was weird. They were all filled with people drinking in almost total silence while staring obsessively at CNN on the television sets. I finished the night off at a bar called the Stoned Crow drinking beer after silent beer while watching the TV people endlessly replay the tape of the planes flying into the buildings. On my way home, I bought a six-pack from a Korean deli. The little fiftysomething Korean man behind the counter took my money and put the beer in a paper bag. After he gave me my change, he touched my arm as I grabbed the bag and said, “You be safe, okay?” I looked at him and nodded, I couldn't talk because I felt like I was going to start crying. I remember wondering if I was going nuts.
When I got back to my studio apartment on 16th Street, I opened a can of beer and looked at the round plastic clock hanging on my wall. It was 12:24. The day was officially over. I felt a small speck of relief washing over me. I took a long gulp from the 16-ounce can of Budweiser and thought to myself, “Jesus, what a weird fucking day.”
Further Reading: New York Times, NY Post, NY Daily News and Crotty Farm Report.
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Bonus Photo!
Kind of ironic that yesterday Gene Rubbico sent in this photo of New York he took on January 5th, 2010. Great photo, Gene, thanks. TO NYC!
29 Comments
Reader Comments (29)
Great 9/11 piece! TO NYC!
Normally, I find it distasteful to toast anybody's death, but in the case of that Schmendrick: Bin Laden, I’ll make an exception. AND I truly hope he suffered a long painful agonizing death.
Lost my Father and Sister on 911
@Barfly: Thanks. TO NYC!
@Harry: So sorry to hear about your loss of your Father and Sister. To their memory and to NYC! R.I.P.
Thanks, Marty
Took the day off, spent most of it on the phone with my Mother.
Having a very weird day....sigh
I think I'm going to go out in DC today after work and have a few celebratory beers ! I really wish I could have joined some people last night. I was out for a few ... came home ... was having a smoke out front ... and saw on my phone that I had an email from wherever stating that Obama was making a 1030pm statement. I'm thinking ? WTF ? why the F would Obama be making a 1030pm statement ? this must be big ?
I had been to the WTC numerous times ... been up to the top of them ... worked/currently work at the Pentagon ... grew up in Pennsylvania --- so 9/11 was horrific to me. I remember thinking .... how are they going to clean up the WTC and fix those holes up top ? .... never thought they'd fall ! So ..... after all of this horror ..... and spending time in Afghanistan myself ...... I'm glad this SOB is dead .... I hope he's enjoying his virgins !
The Manhattan photo is ironic ... the big empty space in the skyline at the tip of the island :(
I got up early that morning to get my son off for school and then my plan was to have some coffee and head out to buy the new Dylan CD...Love and Theft. I sat on the couch....sippin my coffee and the TV was on with the sound turned off. The Today show was on and they had that picture in picture thing going on and i was trying to figure out how the hell a plane could hit one of the towers? Just then......the other plane hit........and ...the world was different place from that moment on! Many terrible things have happened in my lifetime but nothing turned my stomach the way 9-11 did. It was way too much to take in....even on television. Cannot imgagine what it was like for a New Yorker! Glad they got the Son of a Bitch! Closure Yes! I hope!
@Harry: Hang in there my friend! I hope your Mother's doing okay.
@GENE: I used to go to a bar in the WTC with a friend. I've never gone back there since the shit went down. Too afraid of having an anxiety attack down there. Boy, last night dredged up memories I had forgotten about.
@Professor Dungpie: Craziest day of my life! I forgot that Love and Theft came out around then. I'll never forget watching that prick being so joyous watching the towers fall. I really hope he suffered in death.
great writing! and i loved the "dibs on the kidney machine" line! lol!
sorry for your loss harry.
I've been to the WTC many, many times since 9/11. and have many pictures ... I always make a salute - then say "I'm going out and enjoying for you's guys" ... "we'll have fun!" :)
I had already read "the Weird day" on a post last year at 365. I did read it again today. Hard to find the right words for the families of the victims, closure, no because the pain will always be there. This scumbag being killed was a huge step towards ridding the world of terrorism but those that know more about this than us, have said they will continue to make trouble for us, so let's salute our military for continuing this great job, to rid the world of this garbage, one by one.
@Marty and rita r: Thanks.
@Gene: Was that the “Sky Dive Bar”? Very cool bar!
Greetings to you and the people of New York, Marty...especially the ones who's lives were so horribly changed with the loss of a loved one or a good friend on that day. Today you are avenged and are perhaps enjoying a certain degree of closure. Osama Bin Lauden woke up in Hell this morning with one bitch of a headache, and immediately began cranking to the management about the room service down there. Seemes the air conditioning only works when it feels like it, and the ice machine out in the hall is totally fucked and doesn't work at all. Started yelling for his 73 virgins, and also a big jar of Tylenol or better yet some oxycontin for his monster killer headache wouldn't hurt either. No help with the painkiller, but instead of the 73 virgins, the management did send down a 73 year old whore with a prosthetic leg and a bad case of the crabs to spend eternity with. And just wait 'til he sees who's living next door!
Oh, by the way, did you ever see a picture of Osama's second in command...old wen head I call him with that big growth between his eyes...should make one hell of a bullseye for one of our special forces guys one of these days...
@Al: Well said!
@Harry: You're welcome!
@Jaws: Thanks for the update!
@Harry ........ Rockefeller Center ......
"I just hope that son of an ass-raping prick died slowly and painfully" - me too, Marty. Me too.
@Meleah: Great minds think alike!
how's this one?...just happen to pick up "firetruck" last friday and this was the section that i re-read...you talk about random...man it's fuckin' freaky...tippin' one to GENE for that great shot...
Whether we knew many who died on September 11 or personally knew none, we all lost something on that day. Innocence. Security. A trust that our homeland would always be safe.
-Bob Taft
rr
@rr: Really fucking crazy! As always, great quote!
I feel as though maybe I shouldn't comment because I can't relate to what people here experienced. For me I feel no relieve, justice or comfort. I feel sadness. Everyone loses in war.
@Harry I'm so deeply sorry for the loss you and your family have experienced. I can't begin to imagine. Hugs.
@kari: Glad you commented! I too feel sadness, but it's related to Sept. 11th memories. Usually I would never celebrate someone's death, but to me, this was different. I'll never forget watching the video of him watching the Towers go down and he was elated. The guy was pure evil.
Harry, you and yours will remain in my thoughts and prayers.
Thanks Guys
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My most sincere condolences to Harry and everyone else who lost someone on September 11. I don't think that there's any American (or, for that matter, any decent person worldwide) who didn't lose at least a little part of himself that day. I heard someone on the radio this morning, in trying to explain the justification for the celebratory gatherings of Sunday night, say that Bin Laden was this generation's Hitler. Not just those of us who witnessed the events of 2001 as adults, but the ones who were just little kids when they watched such horrific scenes on the news and in the newspapers and magazines. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel just a twinge of a moral dilemma re: the high-fives, t-shirts, and even drink specials that have become pervasive since the President's speech this weekend. But I'm not sorry that Bin Laden was killed. And I hope that his death does, indeed, bring some closure to those people from whom he took so much.
To NYC!!!!
One asshole less in the world!
@Biff: I agree totally!
@Gui_Stecher: To NYC! (Let me know when you're going to be here!)
Love your 9/11 composition Marty!
"I just remember watching footage of that asshole watching the twin towers go down and he was so happy. " I saw that as well and I remember it infuriated me when he said, "The brothers were overjoyed when the towers fell" OVERJOYED! That word alone infuriatd me how can you be "overjoyed" about the death of over 3000 people?!!
@Tiki Bar Susie: Glad you liked the 9/11 story and good riddance to that scumbag!